Wait a second. I thought people complained that you can’t ping consistently with the keystone? Now I hear that it’s a problem with pinging “all the time”?
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The base one means you need to ‘save’ your ping, but an additional point allows you to upkeep the stacks at a much lower damage bonus across enemies so long as you always have something to ping.
A lot of people (usually me included, though I’ve never been a vet main) dislike new things, if they’re different and not clearly better than the old, and people are also strongly opposed to losing power - or cool toys.
That said, a lot of people’s dislike, besides the already mentioned bloated tree, can be condensed to the extra patchnotes they’ve just released:
Several popular Talent choices have been moved and weakened, in addition to some health/toughness nodes being weakened or removed, so that players intending to play exactly like they did before, without using any of the keystones, will have less effective toughness and health than before.
Damage bonuses from Actives and vs. specific enemies are also at times weaker and/or less accessible.
This means that those players see themselves put before a choice to either change how they play - and they don’t like the choices offered by the keystones - or to just get less out of the tree than before.
So yes, compared to before, people do get debuffs for not playing with the keystones.
Furthermore, the keystones added are somewhat clunky.
For an example, lets look at the Zealot Keystones. The conditions for activating keystone benefits are:
- Nearby enemies dying, or critical hits
- Taking damage
- Moving (& dodging)
Basically all of them are variations on the theme of “charge in and knock some heads”, and while that may not be terribly inspired, they are fun, powerful, and each have a different flavour, that benefits different loadouts.
The Veteran’s keystones just require way more playing around them to really reach their potential.
As a personal example:
My two most played Veteran builds recently were both wielding a revolver, one focussing on the revolver and team support- which lost some Toughness, health, Toughness recovery, and damage versus Elites- and the other with a melee focus, where I ended up with slightly less durability and attack speed and significantly less damage after using infiltrate, but overall, the build wasn’t much affected - I mostly used Infiltrate for revives, anyways.
Neither of them benefits terribly from a keystone:
On one, I could have taken Focus Target, but I had a choice of multiple other Talents that offered more reliable benefits, and the other, melee-focussed one seemed like Fatshark would have expected me to pick Weapon Specialist, but the ability is too darn clunky: If I want to focus on melee, I’d basically be forced to run around with my ranged weapon out until I’m in melee range, as the timer starts as soon as I pull out my shovel/power sword.
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These are not mutually exclusive things. Pinging can be inconsistent for the purposes of actually using this ability to its best potential, and it can be annoying AF the rest of the team to hear pings and see highlights pop up several times each firefight.
Okay I get your point but why is it specifically annoying when vet does it?
It’s the same kind of noise, the same voice lines, just a different colour. In my opinion it is way easier to recognise that it’s a veteran with that specific ability using it and if you are a good enough vet player you can specifically reserve a ping to direct your attention to a group of enemies, or a monster, or anything like that. Also, you really should ping in this game, and vet isn’t the only one who gets to do it. And in tier 5 missions and in auric when you literally have like 10 ragers charging you all the time it is really useful.
The pings being inconsistent is one thing (although I must emphasise it, The rest of the team also has the ability to ping), but when you complain about it being annoying when they literally do what the whole team is supposed to be doing in this team shooter I really don’t think you play the game as a part of a team
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I’m not, I’m a Veteran.
Most missions, a player may ping a Daemonhost, or a Crusher coming up from the rear in a big fight that needs to be handled ASAP, or highlight a pack of Maulers waiting in the next area, but usually only a handful of pings per mission in total.
When the Vet may be tagging dozens of times over the course of a game, usually against targets that the Vet wants a damage bonus against but that the rest of the team doesn’t actually need to engage (especially with something like a Plasma gun where they’re just after the flat constant damage bonus instead of saving multiple stacks for tough targets), it gets annoying and distracting.
Running my shield-build Ogryn last night, I found that in periods of intense engagement, having stuff constantly being tagged was taking my attention and drawing it to things that were just getting blown away by the Vet, instead of focusing on the groups of mobs I needed to be trying to push/taunt/distract, and trying to distinguish what the Vet was pinging for damage bonuses vs what someone else may be pinging as a tactical alert was often difficult.
oh nooooooo.
Edit: how do you SEE anything?!
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imo the left hand marksman tree is excellent the mid path is borderline OP and the right… i dont get 
dont see a way to usee that one yet.
i can understand some of the complaints those bottom legs of the tree are long it does push the vet into a more specialised build , add in the big keystones a lot of points do get spent for you, i think there good value, but its still a bit counter to the whole variation point of the trees idea.
marksmans focus 10/10 that knocks it out the park , high power and on theme wouldn’t change a thing.
focus target- it has a clunk issue, i think if the sta/tough gen could over shield like the shout does that would be a good step. then do something to stop it being spam busy work maybe stick it on a replenishing charge system .
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How do you live like this? I have always constantly pinged elites and specialists in any area just to help see what they’re doing behind cover. The only time I stopped pinging is if we’re all already engaging a patrol. With nu-vet the pinging just means we have a new free etra damage boost in the mob I am currently killing and if I kill it it will swap to a new target and that’s literally fine. All my bros ping similarly, so now vet has a funny new game where you re-ping anything your friends ping as the priority target so it dies that much faster. Also the keystone for switching targets for a damage boost is an absolute must take since its a huge buff to the team.
I am guessing there’s a lot of wild flailing going on. Like people can all tell something is wrong with the tree but a lot of people won’t put in any effort to figure out what, they’ll just complain about the first thing they think about or read about. Everyone has the right instinct, something is wrong. I agree with that. But it aint the keystones (except maybe marksman’s focus. I can’t make it feel impactful).
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A 42" 4k OLED display 
On a more serious note, having been playing this game since last year and primarily on 5’s the last few months, with all 4 classes at 30, in my experience pinging happens but nowhere near every engagement, and viewing most replays on YouTube/Twitch, that’s pretty typical.
In my experience, the effort/time/clicking it takes to ping every single shotgunner or flamer that pops up is usually unnecessary effort next to just killing them if I’m able, especially if there’s other stuff going on, and I don’t need to ping the guy I’m lining up a headshot on who won’t be there in the next half-second.
I ping every approaching special I see, also some enemy in a patrol, and every elite I plan to take a long range shot on. I don’t see why I wouldn’t.
I also never noticed receiving a sound when someone else pinged something; Usually they just glow red, which I consider somewhat helpful.
Not that either would make me take one of those keystones, they are around the level of +10% damage or +20 toughness for me.
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Knowing if half the battle, as that sage saying goes.
And the other half of the battle is smoke, fire, blood and meat. I can’t see NOTHING.
So I ping for my life.
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Basically, every build vet had (I tried so far) in patch 14 is worse if you aren’t using the keystones… And keystones (apart from focus target which is fine) feel clunky to use to almost everyone.
Good player detected. Focus Target is absolutely fine with 2 more points to grab 8stacks and the constant damage boost. For some weird reason, I don’t like playing it as much as the Grenadier variation of support vet in patch 14, but probably a few small buffs would turn this around.
The huge yellow deathmark ping looks so great btw. It immediately makes your whole team aware of the target and (my experience is that) either they focus it down right away or absolutely leave you the kill without touching it so you can get CDR depending on the player mentality (both are super good outcomes and work perfectly).
I think it’s exactly the keystones… Marksman and Weapon specialist feels clunky, and they need 20-21 points to reach and 21-23 point to make them functional (not maxed out just something impactful enough).
The fact that Vet is overall weak again is another issue, but giving general buffs won’t make the 2 side keystones less clunky or more impactful.
And maybe also Exhilerating takedown not even letting us test sniper builds properly.
PS: I know you find Weapon Specialist okay, but I strongly disagree and I think I’m not alone on this one. I think I made a strong enough case for it on another thread about why I feel this way.
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I guess the difference here is this:
If you’re tagging to call attention to something that needs killing, that’s great.
If you’re tagging to add a damage bonus to something that’s going to cease to exist the next moment because you’re about to headshot it, that’s not something that adds to the rest of the team’s situational awareness, it’s just distracting, and that’s my fundamental issue with the Keystone.
Ill be honest I dont even use Focus Target but I alway ping regularly. Pinging for team awareness and reconnaissance of enemy groups is a big part of it yes, but if my ping picks out a gunner or shotgunner or grenadier or flamer or… you get the idea, imo my role is to delete such people before they become a problem for anyone else so if I can I will try my best to remove them ASAP.
If highlighting a threat means I can more quickly and reliably remove said threat then I will do so, and until I (or someone closer) does kill it they ARE still a threat so I think the info is still useful for others to be aware of, especially if that guy was just one of a group that just joined the fight or otherwise is just one of those guys who absolutely can ruin someone’s day with just a brief window of existence.
If I had the points to spare to make executioners stance highlight everything it does for everyone else when I use it then I absolutely would, in my mind the more information the team gets the better, id never considered enemy call outs something that distract or confuse.
To put it another way, I think id just be detrimental to the team if I pinged things just to turn around and leave it as someone elses problem.
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No, that’s the best part about Focus Target: now the WHOLE team gets concrete benefits from tagging in any situation with the extra toughness/stam or damage nodes.
It sounds like you have a bad relationship with tagging. I’d urge you to consider thinking about your teammates’ tags as something you should remember to check on in the next few seconds, once you’ve triaged whatever your situation is. It’s the way to play in my opinion. Tag all threats, even if you think you have them in hand, and then expect others to do the same. Check your teammates in your peripheral if you can, or put whatever effort seems reasonable to check on them when you can.
Works in all situations for me. If someone who hates turning around to look at the team happens to have to do that a few more times a match because of my sub-optimal tagging, that’s alright. Maybe they’ll see some plasteel behind me!
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The issue stems from the way the tree is built right now.
The keystones work, happen to be a fan of the focus target myself for the team regen, but going that deep into a tree, a vet is punished more than the other classes due to the ‘bloat’.
As some have said, five points is a lot when looking at a build. Granted, you can skip the keystones completely and split left and middle tree and the vet plays almost exactly how they were after Patch 14.
But if you’re going to take the route that’s going to tie you to a certain style of play (aka less movement or aggressive marking of enemies) then there needs to be a better pay off. You actually get better stat boosts through splitting than focus right now, although the potential skill ceiling is incredibly high on the marksman tree if the stars align, (but the current AI directors clearance sale on 10-12 ragers every 40 seconds is gonna hamper that) it’s still not really worth the restriction based off what you get.
‘Lackluster and underwhelming’ is how I would put it. Focus for marksman should have been what fury is to zealots. Would ‘flow’ much better if that makes sense and a few of the talents need to be rolled up together to get rid of the bloat.
It’s a ‘work in progress’ at this stage. I’m betting they’ll roll out a fix right before the holidays for it. Which will then, of course, break countless other things that their Q and A team missed and we’ll have to deal with those until they get back from the holiday break.
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I would be interested in re-reading it if you can link me.
I definitely agree on this, as stated. Removing just a 2 points worth of tree bloat would solve for most of my issues with the tree.
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